During one meeting in Tengku Razaleigh’s house around nine years ago, the Umno activists and campaigners told him they could guarantee he can topple Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and take over as Prime Minister but it would cost him at least RM400 million.
THE CORRIDORS OF POWER
Raja Petra Kamarudin
The non-Malays are probably puzzled as to what is going on in 1MDB and what is really behind the Lembaga Tabung Haji land purchase from 1MDB. Many Malays as well, except those who walk in the corridors of power or are in the corporate world, would most likely not understand the rational behind all these ‘corporate’ moves.
Actually, to understand what is happening, you need to go back to the time when Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad first became Prime Minister in 1981 and Tun Daim Zainuddin took over from Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah as Finance Minister in 1984.
Prior to that, Umno was very much a party of Malay intellectuals, teachers, civil servants, writers, poets, novelists, newspaper editors, etc. When Dr Mahathir took over, he changed the entire landscape of Umno and turned it into a party for businessmen, corporate people and professionals. Just like MCA, Umno soon became a party of people with money.
In the past, you won a branch or division post based merely on your perjuangan, popularity and your track record of service to the community. By the 1980s, you needed to spend money to win. A branch chief post could easily cost you RM3 million and RM10 million for a division chief post.
One Umno division chief from Perak was even given the nickname ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’. And guess why.
During one meeting in Tengku Razaleigh’s house around nine years ago, the Umno activists and campaigners told him they could guarantee he can topple Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and take over as Prime Minister but it would cost him at least RM400 million.
I was in that meeting — in fact I was sitting next to him — and I glanced in Tengku Razaleigh’s direction to have a clearer look of his face. Tengku Razaleigh grimaced and said if he wins it has to be because Umno wants him and not because he paid RM400 million to win.
No doubt Tengku Razaleigh could easily afford that RM400 million but his ego and pride would not allow him to buy the Presidency, which would make him the new Prime Minister.
Over dinner, that Umno chap who proposed the RM400 million grumbled and said that even Anwar Ibrahim had to pay RM200 million to oust Tun Ghafar Baba. And that was just for the 20 Sabah divisions, not yet including the West Malaysian divisions, he said.
“How much did Anwar spend in total?” I asked this chap, and he replied, “At least RM500-600 million.”
So Umno in the 1980s was an entirely different animal from the Umno of the 1940s/1950s. It was an Umno where money talks and bullshit walks. If was about ‘show me the money’ or else get out of here.
Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the author of ‘The Malay Dilemma’, knew that the New Economic Policy (NEP) had failed. You cannot make 10 million Malays (the Malay population at that time) rich. You cannot hope to achieve a 30% share of the economic pie through 10 million Malays. You need a new strategy.
And this new strategy was you have to make a handful of Malay individuals and Malay-owned or Malay-run trust agencies and GLCs rich instead. This is under the new konsep payung or umbrella concept. This handful of Malay individuals and Malay-owned or Malay-run trust agencies and GLCs would own that 30% instead, on behalf of 10 million Malays.
And you must start with Umno, the organisation representing the Malays and the organisation that will look after the interests of the Malays.
So, when Daim took over as the new Finance Minister, his first job was to make Umno rich, filthy rich in fact. And his first project to make Umno rich was the North-South Highway.
When the Opposition Leader then, Lim Kit Siang, found out that the government had issued a Letter of Intent to United Engineers (M) Berhad (UEM), privatising the North-South Highway to this Umno-owned company, he went to court and tried to obtain an injunction to stop what he said was a conflict of interest and abuse of power.
Kit Siang lost because, according to the court, he did not have locus standi. So UEM won and the project proceeded. What further upset Kit Siang was the fact that UEM was a bankrupt company so the government had to give it grants and loans to do the project.
The project eventually doubled in cost and the government had to bail out UEM by giving it even more money, taxpayers’ money at that.
Umno needed money, a lot of money, because as soon as Dr Mahathir took over in 1981 the construction of Umno’s new headquarters, the Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC), had begun and was completed in 1984 when Daim took over as Finance Minister. So they had to pay for this. It is said the building cost RM60 million, a huge amount of money more than 30 years ago.
Even then it is said that the real cost of PWTC was never revealed because much of it was hidden in the cost of the Dayabumi Complex, which was inflated to cover the cost of PWTC.
Invariably, because of the high cost of Dayabumi, UDA could not afford to pay for the building so Petronas was ordered to bail out UDA by buying over the building.
Petronas was not too happy about that but since, according to the Petroleum Development Act, Petronas has to report directly to the Prime Minister and not to the Cabinet or Parliament, there was nothing much they could do about it except just fork out the money.
So Petronas, reluctantly, got its new headquarters at Dayabumi and Umno, happily, got its new headquarters at PWTC.
Anyway, we will continue in the next episode the story of how Umno was privatised and then corporatised. We also need to discuss how Dr Mahathir was going to make a handful of Malays rich to meet the 30% target of the NEP.
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